Month: December 2023

Enlarge (credit: ToolX via Getty Images)

Three of the world’s biggest pornography sites will be hit with new regulatory curbs including stricter requirements on age verification, after EU regulators determined the adult platforms fell within the scope of a landmark law designed to police content online.

Xvideos, Pornhub, and Stripchat will be from April subject to the obligations of “very large online platforms” under the Digital Services Act (DSA), according to three people familiar with the move.

That designation applies to platforms with more than 45 million users and has so far been applied to tech groups such as Facebook, Wikipedia, and TikTok.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches in January 2023 carrying a GPS III satellite into orbit. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

After our inaugural ranking last year, Ars Technica is again publishing a list of the most accomplished US commercial launch companies. We hope the list sparks debate, discussion, and appreciation for the challenge of operating a successful rocket company.

Please note that this is a subjective list, although hard metrics such as total launches, tonnage to orbit, success rate, and more were all important factors in the decision. And our focus remains on what each company accomplished in 2023, not on what they might do in the future. Certainly there will be more reshuffling next year.

1. SpaceX (no change)

Only one rocket company approached a mind-boggling 100 launches this year. Only one company reused more than 90 percent of the rockets it launched in 2023. Only one company launched one million kilograms of cargo into orbit. And only one company debuted the (privately developed) largest and most powerful rocket ever seen—Starship. And then launched it again just months later on a mostly successful flight.

Enlarge / A new image of NGC 2264, also known as the "Christmas Tree Cluster." (credit: NASA et. al.)

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we're going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It's December 20, and today's image showcases two astronomical objects—the Cone Nebula and the Christmas Tree Cluster—that combined are known as NGC 2264. (NGC, by the way, stands for New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars).

These astronomical objects are found about 2,300 light-years from Earth, and because they are relatively close, they are popular astronomical objects to observe in the night sky. This is a composite image from NASA and other organizations that combines observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory along with those from ground-based telescopes. The image has been rotated clockwise 160 degrees so that the "Christmas tree" appears standing.